Platform is your ability to spread the word about your book. As an indie author, your platform is directly linked with how large your book launch can be. Bigger platforms lead to bigger launches. All else being equal, traditional publishers always prefer large-platform authors to authors with no platform.
So, how do you grow your author platform?
Let’s start with a story.
Once upon a time, a mother pig sent her three little pigs out into the world to seek their fortune. As they journeyed, the first little pig came across a man selling straw. The man said, “If you buy my straw, you can build a house today.” The first little pig bought the straw and had his house built by the end of the day.
The second little pig met a man selling sticks. The man explained, “Sticks are better than straw. Straw blows over too easily, but a stick house will last longer. It will take a bit more time to build, but you can still have a house in just a few days.” The second little pig built his house with sticks. After a couple of days, his house was finished, and he joined the first little pig to laugh and play in the sunshine.
Meanwhile, the third little pig was hard at work building his house out of bricks. It was a long, grueling process, and his brothers teased him for spending so much time and effort on his house. But the third little pig persisted, knowing that lurking in the woods was the big bad wolf.
When the big bad wolf came, he first approached the straw house. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” he called.
“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” the little pig replied.
The wolf huffed and puffed and blew the straw house down, devouring the first little pig. (Yes, in the original stories, everyone dies. This is not the sanitized Disney version.)
Next, the wolf came to the house of sticks. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” he demanded.
“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” the second pig replied.
The wolf huffed and puffed, but the stick house didn’t blow over. Undeterred, the wolf set the house on fire and had a feast of roast pig.
Finally, the wolf reached the brick house. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!” he growled.
“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” said the third little pig confidently.
The wolf huffed and puffed with all his might, but the brick house stood firm. He tried setting it on fire, but the bricks didn’t catch. Frustrated and defeated, the wolf gave up, and the third little pig lived happily ever after.
What is the lesson here for authors?
Most authors build their platforms poorly. They make the mistake of building their platforms with the fragile materials of myths. Before we cover the myths and mistakes, let’s talk about why you write.
Why do you write?
It’s important to know why you write.
Do you write because you want to be somebody? Do you believe the lie that publishing will be your path to a better life? Do you think publishing will earn you respect and affirmation from your peers?
Or do you write because you want to do something? Do you write because you want to change the world and make a difference?
Examine your deepest motivation because there is an important distinction between the two.
Many authors write because they’re looking for validation, and those authors’ publishing careers end in sadness and despair. Publishing is not a good place to receive affirmation. A career in publishing is filled with challenges and rejection.
If you want to succeed, you must have a higher purpose for your writing. Authors who know the purpose behind their writing have a huge advantage over authors who don’t. Your higher purpose fuels the courage required to meet the challenge of building a successful publishing career.
Your higher purpose might be providing for your family, but it must be something beyond yourself. Otherwise, it won’t sustain you through the difficult road ahead.
Having a profit motive gives authors clarity and a huge advantage over authors who just want to “get their book out there.” Authors without a profit motive don’t realize that they’re walking the path to obscurity.
Put another way, it can’t be all about you. You have to love your readers more than you love your book.
Straw Myth 1: I can hide behind my book, remain obscure, and not have to “sell myself.”
When wrestling with the purpose question, many authors wonder when it is okay to “sell yourself.”
Let me answer with another story.
Dr. Barry Marshall was an Australian physician working with patients who had ulcers. After working with ulcer patients for many years, he believed that the treatment methods for ulcers listed in medical textbooks were wrong. The textbooks said ulcers were caused by too much stomach acid, which was caused by stress, greasy food, and alcohol.
But Dr. Marshall believed the extra stomach acid was actually the body’s failed attempt to fight the true cause of stomach ulcers. Therefore, when doctors treated ulcer patients with antacids, the ulcers got worse in the long run.
He took his research to the medical community, and they were not impressed. However, they permitted him to test his findings on some wee little pigs.
He conducted testing on the pigs, and it did not validate his theory. It turns out that pigs have a very robust digestive system. So, Dr. Marshall went back to the medical community and asked for permission to prove his theory by doing trials on humans because he knew his theory was correct.
But the medical community did not grant him permission.
Dr. Marshall was stuck. He knew his theory was correct, and the textbook and standard treatments were wrong, but he did not have permission to prove himself with human trials.
It was a conundrum. He knew he was right and the medical community was wrong, but they wouldn’t give him permission to experiment on humans.
So, Dr. Barry Marshall did a very risky thing. He grew a broth of billions of strains of H. Pylori bacteria and drank it himself. He expected he’d get an ulcer after a year or two, but he got an ulcer within two weeks.
His theory was that if bacteria caused the ulcer, then an extreme regimen of antibiotics may cure the ulcer. He took the antibiotics, and he cured his ulcer.
Dr. Barry Marshall had discovered the cause and cure for a sickness that affects 5% of the population.
Now, I ask you, when is it okay for Dr. Barry Marshall to promote himself?
When is it okay for him to sell himself?
How ridiculous would it be if Dr. Marshall said, “I don’t want people to think that I’m some great scientist or physician. I don’t want people to think that I think I’m something great.”
To prevent people from thinking what he thought they might think about him, let’s say Dr. Marshall kept his findings to himself.
That would be terrible!
I would contend that if he kept his discovery to himself, that would be a greater evil. He knows the good he can do and doesn’t do it. By keeping it to himself, he’s actually doing evil in the world.
You have an obligation to share the truth you’ve discovered with others. You can’t keep your discovery to yourself.
Dr. Barry Marshall had an obligation to build his own credibility so that the medical community would listen to him and people could be cured. He had an obligation to go before the media and build a platform as the ulcer researcher so that he could spread the word about the true cause and cure of ulcers.
To spread the word, he and some other physicians made a comic book telling the story of Dr. Marshall drinking H. Pylori bacteria, and they distributed the comic book at medical conventions to try and change the minds of the medical community.
In 2005, Dr. Barry Marshall won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. All those medical textbooks have now been revised, and if you see your doctor because of an ulcer, they are going to detect it and treat it in an entirely different way than they used to.
Diagnostic and treatment methods were changed, and many patients were cured because Dr. Barry Marshall had the courage to experiment on himself and to spread the word about his findings.
Science is only advanced by challenging the status quo, and if the scientific establishment is against you, it’s a sign that you may be on the verge of a major breakthrough. Never stop doing science because powerful scientists disagree with you. There’s always some powerful scientist against the next thing.
So, why do you write? Is your fame a means, or is it an end?
Dr. Barry Marshall didn’t do science to get famous. He did science and used his fame as a means to advance his science and improve people’s lives.
Beware of False Humility
Many authors talk passionately about how they’re not writing to become rich or famous; they “just want to get their book out there.” They say, “I just have a passion for this book, and I want to get this book out there.” But the whole time, they’re talking about themselves.
That mindset is not good. It’s false humility, and it’s a path to financial destruction.
Authorship is leadership.
Nonfiction writers lead readers into a new way of thinking. Novelists lead readers into a whole new world.
Leadership is service.
If you want to lead, you must be willing to serve. If you serve people well, more people will choose to follow you.
You can’t bully, threaten, or control them into following you. The only way is to woo them by serving them. Love your reader with your writing.
You can’t lead and hide at the same time. Before you can build a platform, you must be willing to stand on it. Fear kills author platforms. If you want to hide and you don’t want people to see your name or face, nothing else in this presentation will help you because you’re not ready to build a platform.
If you’re longing for obscurity, you will find it.
Find Your Courage
You need to find your courage, and the first step towards that is to write a good book. If you believe that a reader who buys your book is doing you a favor, you’ll never be good at selling or marketing. You’ll always feel bad telling people about your book.
On the other hand, if you’re so convinced your book is helpful, entertaining, or funny that people will be thrilled and delighted to read it, then when you tell them about your book, you’re doing them a favor. Suddenly, everything gets so much easier.
We sometimes hide behind obscure language when we write, but courageous writers can be more direct and clearer with their prose. The more you love your reader, the bolder you will become.
Be Done with Writer’s Block
Once you understand your higher purpose, you won’t get writer’s block.
Consider this analogy: there’s no such thing as firefighter’s block. What would you call a professional firefighter who froze in the face of a burning building with people inside? You wouldn’t call them something nice. We don’t admire people who allow their fear to conquer them, even if we would be afraid in that same situation.
As you do the right thing in the face of fear and find your courage, you’ll write a book worth promoting with good conscience.
Finding your courage and writing a good book are like the first buttons on your shirt. If you can get these to line up, everything else will be a lot easier.
Sticks Myth 2: Platform is your social media following.
This myth is a bit different because it’s more insidious.
You’ve probably heard that platform is your following on social media. But that is false. Building a platform on social media does not work anymore.
It used to work, so why doesn’t it work today?
Bots
These days, most social media accounts are fake. There have been loads of fake accounts for many years, but most regular people didn’t have access to AI tools and didn’t understand how so many accounts could be fake. I used to tell authors that most people they were interacting with on social media were bots, and the authors just had to take my word for it.
Now that most of us have played around with ChatGPT, we’ve experienced AI creations, and we know that we may be interacting with bots who are acting like humans. But it’s still tricky. Anyone can generate images of artificial “people,” and you can have an AI large language model generate text for those “people.” When you those bots loose on the internet, you can create a lot of noise on social media.
If you were a bot lord who wanted to influence the elections in Portugal, you wouldn’t want your bots to only follow the Portuguese candidates you’re supporting. You would want your bots to appear real, so you’d have them follow a bunch of random accounts. You’d have them follow some authors, athletes, and musicians in addition to the candidates.
As an author, you need to realize that many of your followers are just bots laundering authenticity through your social media activity. They’re not real, and they’re never going to buy your book.
The best social network for combating this issue right now is X Because it uses the most effective screening tool for distinguishing bots from humans: money. Bots don’t have money.
X has created a separate ecosystem where users can pay a small fee to verify their humanity. Bots don’t have access to banking systems and credit cards because they’re not real. While not all humans have chosen to verify themselves on X, a verified reply to your tweet is a strong indication that it’s coming from a real person.
Noise
Most of your social media interaction is like giving a talk in a noisy room. You post content, and no one responds or engages because they don’t see it. You’ve probably noticed this in your own life over the last few years. Many people have moved their online conversations with friends and family from Facebook to private places like iMessage, Discord, Snapchat, WeChat, and Telegram, all of which are private and hidden from public view. A decade ago, that same interaction would have been on Facebook.
For example, if you used to post pictures of your kids for family members to see on Facebook, you’ve probably switched to sharing them privately on iMessage or another private messaging platform.
Filter
The other problem with social media is that social media sites filter what they show you. They use AI to determine what you should and shouldn’t see.
For example, let’s say your Facebook page has 10,000 likes, and half of them are active human social media users. That doesn’t necessarily mean the other half is fake, but a good percentage of that half is made up of bots. The rest are humans who are no longer active on Facebook. They might still have an account, but they don’t use Facebook often.
The Facebook algorithm used to show organic posts to about 3% of your audience, which brings us down to 150 views on your post. Today, that percentage is even smaller. If you had a crazy-high conversion rate of 20%, you’d get 50 clicks on that post. If the clicks take those 50 followers to your Amazon sales page and you manage to get a 20% conversion rate again, you’ll sell ten copies of your book.
That means, for every 1,000 followers, you sell one book. And that is the best-case scenario.
Organic social media marketing is not effective. Of all the authors I’ve worked with, almost no one can break this 1,000:1 ratio.
If you worked to get 1,000 followers on Instagram, you’ve done all that work to sell one copy of your book. It’s not completely worthless, but almost any other use of your energy and time would give you a better return on your investment.
You just can’t build your platform on social media. It’s like trying to give a speech in a noisy stadium. The people aren’t there to hear you. Everyone’s talking, and no one is listening.
This is why most marketing gurus from the 2000s aren’t marketing gurus anymore. That old social media method stopped working in 2016. You can’t get free attention by creating content online.
However, you can get attention by paying for advertising. Advertising on social media does work. If social media is a stadium full of people, showing them ads on the jumbotron or the stadium fence is still effective. Paying money to buy ads still works. It doesn’t work for everyone all the time, but it does work.
The other approach to getting attention is to be a player on the field of the stadium. In other words, if you become a celebrity outside of social media, you can leverage your celebrity to build a following.
The most popular influencers on Instagram and Facebook are famous athletes, businesspeople, actors, musicians, and bestselling authors.
Once you’ve sold a million copies of your book, the rules change a little bit. Once you get on the field, once you’re handed the microphone, the whole arena is listening to you. But you don’t get there by learning how to shout louder in the stands. To get on the field, you must play an entirely different game.
The fall of social media is a good thing. Social media was expensive, toxic, and ineffective. Even when it worked, it didn’t work very well. It really was like building a house of sticks. It was a lot of work, but it doesn’t hold up.
Some authors and publishers haven’t yet realized the ineffectiveness of social media, and they may mock you for leaving the ineffective social media path. But here is the rebuttal you can give any industry professional: “Show me the numbers.” That tends to quiet them very quickly. They don’t have any numbers. They have opinions and hearsay but no data to prove that social media is effective.
To build a lasting platform, you must escape the social media trap.
I would like to show you a better way of building with bricks.
Bricks: The building blocks of a rejection-proof platform.
Brick 1: Focus on the Benefits to the Reader
When you’re selling something, focus on the benefits to the person you’re selling to.
Many authors are like Calvin, who’s selling a swift kick in the butt. Hobbes says, “How’s business?”
“Terrible,” says Calvin.
Hobbes says, “That’s hard to believe.”
Calvin says, “I can’t understand it. Everybody I know needs what I’m selling.”
It’s a common approach, especially amongst nonfiction authors.
When you’re selling, you can present your book as a vitamin or a painkiller. Successful authors present their books as painkillers. Once you understand the pain your book alleviates, you’ll have clarity on your marketing. To learn more, listen to my episode on The Psychological Reasons Readers Read Books.
Some people read for relaxation, and others read for excitement. They read different books for different reasons.
To discover your reader’s pain, you must know who your reader is.
Brick 2: Know Your Reader
To get to know your readers, you need to read what they’re reading and understand why the books in the genre are popular. Reading in the genre you write will help you stay inside of your genre norms and use tropes appropriately.
More importantly, it will keep you from becoming accidentally derivative. Some authors think, “If I just don’t read the other books in my genre, I won’t be derivative.” But that’s not true. Because you’re in the same culture, you’re experiencing the same cultural zeitgeist, and if you’re not reading the other books in your genre, you’ll become the worst kind of derivative, which is accidentally derivative.
Ultimately, you’ll find your target reader, whom I like to call Timothy.
Timothy is not an avatar or a persona or construct. He’s not a “woman between the ages of 18 and 50 feeling overwhelmed.” That’s almost all people between 18 and 50.
Timothy is a specific person, a real live human being who you can talk to and ask questions of. I found that when authors create a customer persona or reader avatar, they’re too creative for their own good. They end up creating an imaginary friend who likes everything they write, and that imaginary person isn’t useful for helping the author make marketing or craft decisions.
Fit the book to your reader. Marketing and platform building is not about changing people into the kind of people who like your book. It’s about changing your book to be the kind of book that appeals to your people.
You can’t change people. You can barely change yourself. You have to love people as they are and not go about trying to change them. That kind of marketing does not work.
If you don’t start with your reader in mind, you often end up needing to start over. Many authors discover this the hard way. Their first book is written for themselves rather than for an audience, and they eventually have to set it aside and focus on writing a second book with their readers in mind.
Some authors, however, make the mistake of trying to publish that first book. This often leads to disappointment, frustration, and even disillusionment. In some cases, the lack of success with their first book causes them to give up on writing altogether. But in reality, all they needed to do was recognize the value of that first book as a learning experience, set it aside, and write a second book tailored for their readers.
Brick 3: Build a Platform
Five Baby Steps for Building a Platform
I am now a dad of four children. We recently had our fourth child a couple of months ago, and our oldest is six years old. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about authors as I watch my children learn to walk.
Step 1: Learn to Sit
You can’t learn to walk until you learn to sit. Sitting doesn’t seem to have anything to do with walking or even crawling. Learning to sit is the first skill on the path of learning to walk.
If you are still working on your rough draft, these are things that you can do right now.
Choose Your Author Name
I spend a lot of time helping people pick their author names. You want to choose a name that doesn’t conflict with another author and one which you can get the dot-com domain for. If your name is Thomas Umstattd, you buy ThomasUmstattd.com.
In general, you want to use your real name. In the age of AI authors, your humanity is becoming your biggest asset. Using a pen name makes you look like an AI author. It’s kind of like walking up to the plate with a strike against you. Using a pen name means you’ll have to work even harder to prove your humanity.
Buy Your Domain Name
Buy YourName.com and reserve your handles on social media. Even if you’re never going to use them, it’s good to own them just to keep somebody else from using them.
Learn more about choosing an author name in the following episodes:
- Are Pen Names Going Away?
- How to Stand Out When Your Name Fits In
- Major Mistakes You Might Be Making With Your Author Name
Step 2: Learn to Crawl
Crawling has little to do with walking yet, but it develops your core strength, balance, and coordination.
Build a Website
In this second step, you are building your website or paying someone to build it for you.
Having a website before you’re published is crucial, even if you’re an unpublished novelist. Having a website demonstrates your financial commitment to your own platform and shows agents, editors, and potential readers that you’re serious about your writing career. Plus, it makes your next steps easier.
Your website will function as the hub of all your author activity. It can house your blog or podcast if you decide to have one. People can sign up for your email newsletter through a form on your website. It will be your online home and one of the first parts of your platform.
I have a free course on how to build your own website. It walks you through the whole process of building an amazing author website.
Develop Your Craft
This is the stage where you focus on developing your craft as a writer. It’s not just about writing; it’s about learning how to write well. You should be reading books on the craft of writing, practicing through short stories, and honing your skills. Seek feedback from critique partners and mentors to improve your writing fundamentals.
Many writers have amazing stories in their minds, but their lack of mastery in writing techniques often holds them back. Weak craft becomes a barrier to getting published, attracting readers, and achieving goals. By investing time and effort in improving your craft, you set yourself up for greater success as a writer.
To learn more about developing your craft, listen to the following episodes:
Start an Email Newsletter
Starting to build your email list early is essential. By having a website with an email sign-up form, you create a direct channel to communicate with your audience, share updates about your book, and build a following even before your book is ready to buy.
In the early days, you’ll be emailing your friends and family, but by the time you launch your book, you’ll have hundreds or thousands of subscribers to your email newsletter.
Check out the following episodes on email newsletters:
- How to Pick the Right Email Marketing Service for You
- How to Build an Email List Before Your First Book Comes Out
- 8 Tools to Help Authors Get More Email Subscribers
- How to Grow Your Email List from 0 to 10,000
Step 3: Learning to Stand
Guesting
Step three involves being a guest on other people’s platforms. This means appearing on someone else’s podcast, blog, or radio show. As a guest, you get valuable practice being interviewed and sharing your message without the technical challenges of running your own podcast. You don’t have to worry about things like mastering audio levels, editing out filler words, or submitting your podcast to platforms like iTunes. The host takes care of all that.
Your job is simply to show up, use a good microphone, speak clearly, and be engaging. Learn more in the following episodes:
- How to Get Booked for Guest Podcast Interviews Overview
- How to Run a Podcast Tour (With Guest Mary DeMuth)
- How to Sound Great as a Podcast Guest
- Course: How to Get Booked as a Podcast Guest
Create a Reader Magnet
If you’re not published yet, the first thing you should create is a reader magnet. A reader magnet is a free resource readers get in exchange for subscribing to your email newsletter. Developing a reader magnet is an excellent exercise, especially for new authors, as it helps you clarify your value to your audience while building your platform.
As a novelist, you can start by writing several short stories set in your story world with your characters. Focus on improving your craft and choose the very best story to turn into your reader magnet. Package it as an eBook with a professional-looking cover and make it available on your website as a download.
Nonfiction authors can create a guide, tip sheet, or other resource to attract their ideal readers.
This process is an excellent learning experience. You’ll gain hands-on knowledge of the fundamentals of publishing, all in a low-risk environment. If something doesn’t work out or you change your approach later, you can easily replace or remove the reader magnet.
Create a Landing Page
A landing page is a special page on your website where you will promote your reader magnet. When people want to receive your email newsletter, you’ll send them to your landing page to find more details and enter their name and email address. Many beginning authors use their homepage as their landing page, but eventually, you will have more reader magnets than will fit on your homepage.
If you learn to create landing pages now, you’ll already have that skill developed when it’s time to develop another reader magnet.
I have a guide on How to Create a Landing Page if you need help.
When you hand out business cards or share your work, people can visit the landing page, discover your short story or resource, and download it. It gives them an immediate taste of your writing.
This not only helps you start building your reputation as an author but also establishes credibility with readers right from the start.
Step 4: Learning to Walk
By step four, you’ve established your platform and are running your own initiatives. This is the stage where you’re:
- Launching your book.
- Buying ads to promote your work.
- Implementing price-pulsing strategies.
- Hosting your own podcast.
- Maintaining a blog or Substack newsletter.
You don’t need to do all these things, but at this point, you have ownership over your content and platform. You’ve transitioned from being a guest on others’ platforms to hosting your own, with people now seeking opportunities to collaborate with you.
Step 5: Run
You have earned your way to this step, and it comes much later in your career.
This is the stage where you’re appearing on TV and hosting book signings. Many authors get discouraged by jumping into book signings too early, but timing is crucial. Book signings can be effective, but only if you’re already well-known. To succeed, you need a local audience—like 50 to 75 people in a city such as Topeka, Kansas—who are on your email list and eager to attend, bringing the books they’ve already purchased.
At this stage, social media also begins to work more effectively because your established fame attracts attention and engagement.
Where can I find more bricks for building my author platform?
One way to find answers is to use Google. For specific technical questions, Google can be incredibly helpful. In fact, when you call tech support, they often just search your question on Google and read you the answer.
This approach works well for straightforward issues, like fixing a broken printer or troubleshooting website problems.
However, Google becomes less useful if you don’t know what questions to ask. In those situations, an outside perspective is helpful.
Outside Perspective
Where should you go for an outside perspective? A common choice for many authors is to turn to other authors. In fact, many authors offer courses on various aspects of publishing and marketing.
The sales pitches for those courses are usually presented in the same way: “I was a struggling author like you. Then, I discovered techniques that worked for me. Now, I’m a successful author, and if you buy my course, I’ll teach you these same techniques.”
Have you heard a sales pitch like that?
It’s kind of like a quarterback saying, “I was struggling to play quarterback, and I got injured all the time, but then I learned some exercise techniques that have kept me from getting injured, and I have improved my game.”
That’s a great help if you want to be a quarterback, but what if you want to play defensive end or tennis?
Suddenly, the farther you get from that particular author’s techniques, the farther you get from your audiences and the less effective those techniques become.
If you were getting injured all the time on the football team, who would you rather talk to? The quarterback or the team doctor?
The team doctor’s expertise doesn’t come from being good at football. She’d die on a football field. Her expertise comes from the fact that she went to medical school.
The Author’s Team Doctor
I’m not a doctor, but I have been working with authors for about 20 years in that kind of role.
I started as a webmaster, building websites for authors. After we built an author’s website, they were so happy with it that they wanted us to help with the rest of their marketing. Then, I became a marketing director for a traditional publishing company. I was a literary agent for a time, and I worked with New York Times bestselling authors and beginning authors. I’ve learned which techniques work for established authors and which ones work for beginning authors.
During this time, I was also hosting the Novel Marketing Podcast, now the longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. My office is filled with books sent by listeners, often accompanied by heartfelt thank-you notes. These notes come from authors who achieved their publishing goals, whether getting published or hitting their bestseller targets, by applying what they learned from my free podcast.
The blog versions of the podcast equal over 180,000 words per year, and that’s the equivalent of three books on marketing every year. I’ve been podcasting for over a decade.
I used to see being a generalist as a weakness, but I’ve come to realize that it’s prepared me to do something really special.
My entire career has prepared me to help authors with platform building. I started speaking around the country. In the past, I’d teach a couple of sessions at writers conferences, but then I started doing week-long intensive training. I taught one in Hawaii and another in Switzerland.
Now that my wife and I have four children, I’m no longer traveling to teach. Instead, I took that week-long training and created a course called Obscure No More: The Complete Guide to Growing Your Author Platform.
Obscure No More is the entire stack of bricks where you can learn everything all in one place taught by me. You don’t have to learn every brick. In fact, nobody does unless they’re going into professional marketing, but they’re all there in one place and easy to find when you need them.
The Novel Marketing Method, taught by me, is a comprehensive, cohesive approach to building your platform. With this method, you avoid the confusion of conflicting advice. While other approaches can work, consistency is key.
Think of it this way: if you want to learn swing dancing, you should learn from someone who teaches swing dancing. If you want to learn tango, learn from a tango instructor. Don’t expect to become a great dancer by combining a free intro course on swing dancing with another on tango. The same principle applies to marketing. Focus on a single, well-structured method for the best results.
I don’t just tell you what you need to do; I also show you step-by-step how to do it. You won’t need to do everything the course presents to build your platform, but everything you need to build your platform is in the course.
Bite-Sized Sessions
The course modules include bite-sized video sessions. These are short, focused, highly edited sessions that take you through various elements of building your platform, from building your website to developing your brand to launching a podcast.
Extended Deep Dives
The course also includes extended deep dives on topics that get into the weeds. If you want help with a specific topic, you’ll find an extensive session on those topics.
AI-Thomas
The course also includes access to AI-Thomas, where you can chat with an AI replica of my brain. Over the past couple of years, I’ve created an AI chatbot and trained it on more than 500 episodes of my various podcasts. We used those hundreds of thousands of words of blog posts to train our AI model.
The AI-Thomas chatbot also cites its sources. You can type in your marketing questions, and if I’ve ever done an episode on that topic, you’ll get a summarized version of my answer as well as links to the episode where you can read the blog or hear human Thomas talk about it in depth.
Human Thomas
In addition to AI-Thomas, you also get access to human Thomas. Once a month, I host a special Q&A session with Obscure No More students. I answer questions, review websites, or check reader magnets. My goal is to answer every question every month, and so far, I’ve been able to do that.
Exclusive Student Community
You’ll also find help in our exclusive student community, where you can interact with other students in the course. Before you join the course community, you can check out the larger public community at AuthorMedia.social.
New Course Modules
I’ve been teaching this course for four years, and whenever a question that isn’t already covered comes up during office hours, I’ll answer it on the spot and then create a session to address it. Over time, this has made the course incredibly robust and tailored to the real challenges and questions that authors ahead of you have faced.
As a result, the course provides the bricks for a well-paved path to an author solid platform that will endure. Once you sign up, you’ll get immediate access to all the content and resources.
Questions & Answers
Question 1: I hear so much about building an email list, but no one I know wants more emails. How do you find people who really want to keep in touch through email?
Answer: People do want emails, but only if they’re interesting and valuable. People check email every day, often first thing in the morning, because they anticipate receiving important, relevant, and meaningful messages.
In fact, platforms like Substack, where people pay to receive quality email content, are among the fastest-growing segments of the email world. This shows that well-crafted emails are not just tolerated; they’re wanted.
In the course, we teach you how to create emails that readers want to open. What people don’t want are overly pushy, sales-heavy marketing emails.
Consider this: the only way I promoted this webinar was through email, and it got you here. Email works when done right.
Readers want emails that are relevant, entertaining, helpful, and engaging. The ideal mix of these qualities depends on your audience. This is why knowing your Timothy (your target reader) is so important. When you create the kind of email your Timothy enjoys, they’ll eagerly open and read it.
People can unsubscribe with one click if they want. And you actually want people to unsubscribe if they don’t find your emails interesting, partly because it saves you money.
Question 2: I would love some ideas for social media posts, specifically for pre-published authors who are aiming for traditional publishing.
Answer: To understand where social media is headed, you have to realize that there’s one social network platform that is eating the lunch of all of the other social networks.
The primary metrics social media platforms use to measure their success are active monthly users and average time on site. Those are the two metrics that determine a social network’s stock value. TikTok is blowing all the other platforms out of the water. That’s why Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are imitating TikTok.
If I could give you one piece of advice on social media, it would be to learn how to create a really good short video.
I’ve been experimenting with this myself. On our Novel Marketing YouTube channel, we’ve started making shorts. We’ll take one-minute clips from our hour-long conversations and share them as bite-sized videos. Creating content that resonates with your audience and performs well on YouTube requires experimentation.
Social media is essentially a dance with the algorithm, which is constantly changing. To succeed, you need to develop a feel for these changes. While blog posts and advice from social media gurus can help you catch up, they’re often a step behind the latest trends.
To truly excel on social media, you need to stay ahead of the curve, which means noticing algorithm shifts and spending a lot of time consuming content on the platform you’re using. That level of engagement is very time-consuming, which is one reason why I don’t recommend it for most authors.
Your time would be better spent writing more books. The kind of content I’d be creating is book-review-type content you find on BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube, where you’re reviewing books similar to yours.
If you want to skate to where the puck is headed, it’s all about video. It’s also important to learn the basics of looking good on video, editing your footage, and choosing the right camera.
The best camera is likely the one already on your phone. If you’re an iPhone user, consider upgrading to the latest model. If you prefer Android, the latest Samsung Galaxy is a great choice. Both options provide high-quality cameras that are more than sufficient for creating excellent video content.
Question 3: What is the best platform investment I can make with my time while money isn’t an option?
Answer: You might check my podcast episode on How to Publish on a Budget: Your First Five Years as an Author.
To address this issue more deeply, I recommend getting a job. If you want to reap, you must be willing to sow, and if you want to make money, you need to invest money.
Publishing or writing a book is rarely a quick path to making money. Instead, consider a job in the publishing industry, such as working as an author’s assistant, an editor, or a marketing assistant.
You could help an established author with tasks like managing their emails or working with tools like ConvertKit, applying your skills to meet their needs. It’s a great way to get paid twice. You’re getting paid with experience and with money.
Authors who are always searching for free options often fall victim to exploitation in this industry. They can end up losing control of their work, with no rights to their creations. The mindset of “I’ll just invest time instead of money” is outdated. It’s from the 2000s when platforms like Facebook allowed people to build fame and leverage it into a $15,000 book advance.
That approach doesn’t work anymore. Today, everything costs at least a little money. A website and an email newsletter cost money. It’s not a huge expense, but it’s still an investment.
This is why I recommend getting a part-time job. Even delivering pizzas can be a great option. While driving, you can listen to podcasts like Novel Marketing or the Christian Publishing Show for free and learn about writing, marketing, and improving your craft. You can earn while you learn.
It’s essential to move away from the mindset of “I don’t spend money.”
If you’re a chicken in a coop, the food may be free, but that’s because you are the product being sold. The same is true on the internet: when something is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. This often means sacrificing your rights, freedom, and privacy.
However, the rules change entirely when you become a paying customer.
So, get a job, pay for what you need, and stop looking for free shortcuts. This will make you far less vulnerable to the industry’s “big bad wolves.”
The Story of Three Little Authors
Let’s close with one final story.
Once upon a time, there were three little authors who set out to find their publishing fortunes.
The first little author came across a print-on-demand company that said, “Your book is fantastic! If you go with us, you can have your book published today!” So, the first little author agreed. Sure enough, just a few days later, the first little author held a book in his hands.
Then, along came the big, bad Barnes & Noble. The little author said, “Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Noble, let me in, let me in!”
But Barnes & Noble replied, “Who are you?” and completely ignored the little author, blowing him away.
The second little author didn’t want to make the same mistake. Instead, he came across a literary agent who said, “You don’t want to self-publish. You should go with a publishing company like Acme Publishing.” So, the second little author signed with the agent. It required more effort and took longer, but eventually, the second little author had a contract with Acme Publishing.
Eighteen months later, he finally had a book in hand. Then along came the big, bad Barnes & Noble. The little author said, “Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Noble, let me in, let me in!”
Barnes & Noble replied, “Okay, since you’re with Acme Publishing, we’ll stock your book in the five Barnes & Noble stores closest to where you live, and we’ll see if it sells.”
The little author eagerly waited as the stores each stocked five copies of his book, but the books were tucked away deep in the shelves, with the spine out, and went unnoticed. The little author hadn’t told anyone to go buy his book and had no platform to let readers know it existed.
After 30 days, Barnes & Noble returned all the unsold books to Acme Publishing, where they were set on fire.
The third little author, however, built a tall, strong platform out of bricks. This platform ensured that whether he chose traditional publishing or self-publishing, his book would sell. The big, bad Barnes & Noble couldn’t blow him off because this little author had something they wanted: access to a loyal audience of readers that he had cultivated himself.
The lesson of the three little authors is that minimum effort leads to minimum results. Maximum effort with the wrong methods also leads to minimum results, but hard work brings success one brick at a time.
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